Horror movies have always reflected and explored the political climate of the eras that produced them. In the 1950s, Cold War paranoia led to a spate of films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers about aliens hiding among us, looking to destroy humanity from within. Later the chaos and bloodshed of the Vietnam war inspired a cycle of cynical, anarchic and bloody movies such as Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven’s Last House On the Left, in which the rules of civilised society collapse amid senseless, numbing violence. Horror cinema, with its in-built tropes of shock and tension, has always provided a convenient way for culture to process real-life fears.

This is why Resident Evil 7, released this week to much critical acclaim, is an interesting benchmark for where horror video games are right now, and what they say about the world around us. Set in a nightmarish version of rural Louisiana, the story has everyman Ethan Winters stumbling on a seemingly abandoned plantation mansion while searching for his missing wife, Mia. What he discovers however, is psychopathic family, who imprison him in their supernatural lair.

It’s an enormous re-direction from the previous two titles in the Resident Evil series, which took the originally tense and slow-paced formula of the survival horror genre in a more action-orientated direction. Those games had epic battles, hordes of monsters and well-armed soldiers, and the pace was more akin to a military shooter than a classic horror experience.

Of course, there are commercial reasons for Capcom to revert to the style and structure of its original Resident Evil games: fans of the franchise were becoming alienated, and there were better military action games out there. But it also feels like the right time for horror games to turn in on themselves.

Whatever your political persuasion, 2016 was filled with seismic sociocultural shocks, with Brexit and Donald Trump being the standout examples. In the aftermath of both the EU decision and the US election, there was an outpouring of uncertainty and alienation; people took to social media to express their incomprehension – families with differing political views turned on each other. In short, we entered an era of mass, localised suspicion: who or what did my neighbours vote for and why? If they don’t think like me, what else are they hiding? In a debate that took in immigration, patriotism and identity politics, the impulse on social media was to ‘other’ those who held opposing views, to represent these people as intrinsically different, even alien.

If horror entertainment really does reflect the fears of our times, then we should be entering another period in which the monsters are our neighbours, and the venues are our homes and towns. Although obviously developed in Japan, it’s fascinating that Resident Evil 7 should take as its setting the American rural south, feeding into the horror mythology of the sociopathic redneck that cinema explored in the 1970s, through the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Deliverance and others. Whether consciously or not, Capcom has taken its latest title into a place of symbolic fear and resentment for metropolitan Americans. The Baker family are the rednecks, the deplorables, taken to their absolute limits.

Resident Evil 7 is not alone here. Last year saw the prescient We Happy Few about a dystopian society controlled by an Orwellian state obsessed with media manipulation. There was also the excellent Layers of Fear, in which an increasingly unsettled painter fights to finish his major work in a house that is constantly shifting and changing. This year, two other titles Allison Road and Visage will make similar explorations of the old haunted house genre, and both put the emphasis on psychological fear rather than spooks and jump scares. This is, after all, an era in which there is no certainty and no escape – the sociopolitical horrors of the world follow us to our TVs, smartphones and tablets; they chase us on to social media. The haunted house genre subverts our idea of home as a place of safety and escape. This seems remarkably relevant in 2017.

Elsewhere, one of the most intriguing new ‘horror’ titles from the independent sector is Hello Neighbor, a stealth game where the player must sneak into the house next door, ostensibly to find out what is hidden in the basement. The neighbour however, has advanced AI and every time he catches you near the house, he erects a new defence. Due out this summer, the game is an interesting examination of petty paranoia and provincial suspicion, echoing the post-Brexit, post-election days of blame and finger-pointing.

The essence of horror is possibility – the possibility that your worst nightmares could come true. When we live in a political climate of epochal change and uncertainty, the sense of dread floods everything, until the smallest assumptions are tested and found wanting. This is when horror entertainment stops being about super soldiers battling giant monsters and turns in towards the town, the neighbour, the home.

Hello Neighbor – a horror game about spying on the house next door Photograph: Dynamic Pixels/Tiny Build

“I’m interested in vulnerable characters, in normal human beings,” said Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami when we interviewed him three years ago. “The horror experience is most scary when the player really isn’t sure whether their character is going to live or die – death and survival need to be on a constant see-saw. If there’s a situation where you’re not 100% sure that you can avoid or defeat the enemies, if you feel maybe there’s a chance you’ll make it – that’s where horror lies.”

In 2017, everyone has been battered by these vast political and societal changes, and we all hope things will get better. It’s that hope that horror clings to. Once again, the seemingly deserted house, the one no desperate wayfarer should enter, is a potent symbol of both salvation and annihilation. The scales could tip either way. If we can’t process our fears and our uncertainties about everything and everyone around us, it’s OK. Horror games will do that for us.